In Iraq, a "Surge" Of Success

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Are we succeeding in Iraq? Look no further than the front page
of your daily newspaper. What had been a steady barrage of bad news
has now slowed to a trickle.

Our military's success on the ground is changing public
expectations as well. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center
for the People and the Press found that most Americans (53 percent)
now think "the U.S. will ultimately succeed in achieving its goals"
in Iraq. That's up from 42 percent in the fall of 2007.

Why the improvement? We can thank the "surge."

A little more than a year ago President Bush announced he would
be sending more U.S. troops to Iraq. They deployed over the course
of several months, and were all in country by June. It was a bold
decision. His party suffered a humiliating defeat in the mid-term
elections, and the Iraq Study Group had recommended a troop
withdrawal. Plus, opinion polls showed the public had soured on the
war.

Still, more American troops flowed into Iraq under a new
commander, Gen. David Petraeus, with a new counterinsurgency
strategy that puts a premium on protecting Iraqi civilians and
dispersing U.S. troops more widely to create areas of security. The
results have been breathtaking.

In December 2006, there had been more than 1,600 sectarian
killings in Iraq. Within six months that number had been more than
cut in half. Before the surge, Anbar province was under al Qaeda's
control. "We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been
defeated politically -- and that's where wars are won and lost,"
one Army officer said in the fall of 2006.

That, too, turned around in just a few months. "I think, in that
area, we have turned the corner," Marine Gen. James Conway told
reporters after visiting Anbar in April 2007, barely three months
into the surge.

Things turned around fast because the surge convinced many of
Iraq's Sunnis to stop fighting the Iraqi government and join us in
fighting al Qaeda.

Now, al Qaeda in Iraq has been decimated as a fighting force.
Iraq's interior ministry announced late last year that three
quarters of its terrorist network had been destroyed. But all this
progress is, as yet, fragile.

"I did run into anxiety among many Iraqi officials about talk of
a precipitous American withdrawal from Iraq," Rep. Mike Pence,
R-Ind., reported after a recent trip to Iraq. "Regular Iraqis on
the street see the vital and critical importance of a durable
American presence, at least in the near term. And people understand
the American soldier, combined with the cooperation of Sunni and
Shia Arabs in this country, is the pathway toward stability and a
successful free and democratic Iraq."

This support is critical, because the United States cannot
simply wash its hands of the Middle East, no matter how much we
might want to. As we learned on Sept. 11, the oceans no longer
protect us against the pathologies of a handful of religious
extremists.

The U.S. needs to engage Muslims and encourage them to settle
peacefully the differences within their faith. We're seeing that
today in Iraq, where Sunni Muslims increasingly are working with
Shia Muslims to put an end to violence. This is the best way
forward.

It was five years ago this month that the United States led a
coalition into Iraq to, finally, remove Saddam Hussein and defend
the international law he'd flouted for decades. In the years since,
we've enjoyed successes and suffered setbacks. Predictably, opinion
polls have moved up and down over the course of the war.

But the bottom line is that the surge is working.

"He conquers who endures," the Roman poet Persius once wrote.
That's true in Iraq as well.

If we press on in helping to pacify that nation and bringing
Muslims together to battle al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, we
can make the world a safer, more secure place. A worthwhile goal,
to say the least -- even if the news doesn't make the front
page.